5 ms·

FratMusic.com searching for tech co-founder

21 points by mhm6b 16y ago

FratMusic.com is searching for a tech co-founder. FratMusic is an online music forum targeting the college demographic. Before the site was shut down in May for legal reasons, we reached 100,000 visits a day. We're looking to re-launch by the beginning of September. The site needs someone young and hungry to work their ass off for equity. Interested programers should contact mark@fratmusic.com. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fratmusic.com#

arram 16y ago
Very impressive Mark - congrats!
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
fname 16y ago
Before the site was shut down in May for legal reasons Have these been resolved? Can you expand upon what happened and how you resolved it?
- mhm6b 16y ago
  yes, they have been resolved. I will expand upon them more through email.
jgg 16y ago
What will this site do that Grooveshark or Last.fm doesn't, besides market to a different demographic?
k33n 16y ago
I find the term "cofounder" to be way overused, especially on HN lately. Once a company has been founded, and an initial product launched, how is it possible to "hire" a cofounder? Also: > The site needs someone young and hungry to work their ass off for equity. If you can't afford to pay a programmer, you should probably just work your own ass off.
- kristiandupont 16y ago
  >If you can't afford to pay a programmer, you should probably just work your own ass off. Are you suggesting that it is unethical for people to work for equity?
  - k33n 16y ago
    Depends on the type of equity being offered, and who it's being offered to. The equity being offered here is probably worth nothing, or worse, is a liability. Especially since it's being offered to a "young and hungry" AKA "green" programmer who doesn't know that yet.
- mhm6b 16y ago
  I'm looking for someone that is going to drive the site forward without having to watch over them. I'm looking for someone to take ownership of their work. Thus, equity.
  - enjo 16y ago
    One simple request: Can you please make sure you provide adequate counseling about the tax implications of 'working for equity' that given an already-launched product can be quite onerous?
    - damoncali 16y ago
      This is HUGE. The new hire can wind up with a substantial tax bill, and no cash to pay it with. Don't gloss over this!
      - grasshoper 16y ago
        Surely the government would accept equity in an ambitious young startup poised to reshape the world of online music.
        16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
zackattack 16y ago
Who are you and what do you bring to the table?
- mhm6b 16y ago
  who are you and what do you bring to the table?
  - fname 16y ago
    To be honest, Zack's question is spot on when looking for a co-founder; especially when all you're giving back in return is equity. Who are you? What have you done in the past? Can you show the community what you've done so far? I think the legal trouble you mention also needs some explanation (assuming you can talk about it in this open of a forum). A little effort can go a long way here.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    You don't know Zack, but he runs a kickass online music service, bootstrapped by himself and he built everything.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    To be fair, at the very least Zack has links in his profile and >2000 karma on HN. Yours is a brand new account with no bio.
quantize 16y ago
As a university student, I can attest to the popularity of fratmusic.com - it is a resource used my many of my friends from across the country at different universities. It's recent shutdown caused quit a bit of chatter among all of us and we were sad to see it go. It would be great for it to come back with an even better and more substantial offering.
CharlesW 16y ago
FWIW, I'm not dyslexic and still had to read this a couple times before I saw something other than "FartMusic". Also, "frat" is not a positive word in most people's minds. Two good reasons for changing the name before you do anything else.
omarish 16y ago
I'd like to add a little bit to this discussion. Disclaimer: I wrote most of the site's code and worked extensively with Mark for the past few months. To start, Mark is a great co-founder. He doesn't code, but he always has a strong vision about the product. Yes, at first I thought that a visionary co-founder was a glorified way of saying over-zealous MBA, but Mark has the ability to see both the forest and the trees when it comes to building a product and developing software on a constrained schedule. The two of us worked extensively on the product, building and scaling it from a simple flatpage app to something that appealed to college kids around the US while handling 22 concurrent req/sec. I left FratMusic for two reasons. First, I didn't have enough time to dedicate to developing the site. Second, I was concerned with some of the legal issues that the site could be facing. Despite this, I know Mark has been working diligently to find a way to make the site work. If I had more time, I definitely would have stuck with the project. Technically, the site is pretty fun. I wrote it all in Django and it comes with some interesting problems, both tech and systems. From a technical perspective, I spent a fair bit of time trying to better recommend music to users, and to A/B test purchasing avenues through iTMS and Amazon. From a systems perspective, the site has a grown a lot. Last semester, we were doubling our slice's ram just about every three weeks. We switched from Apache to nginx and are now running in a full MySQL / python / fcgi / nginx / memcached environment. There are a lot of fun challenges in there to. FratMusic is a household name on a lot of college campuses. Here's a twitter search: http://twitter.com/search?q=fratmusic http://twitter.com/search?q=fratmusic. Our facebook page has about 25K fans and is growing. The site is very simple, but it works. Anyways, if you have any questions, feel free to ping me as well. omar.bohsali@gmail.com.

21 points by mhm6b 16y ago

arram 16y ago

Very impressive Mark - congrats!

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

fname 16y ago

Before the site was shut down in May for legal reasons Have these been resolved? Can you expand upon what happened and how you resolved it?

mhm6b 16y ago
yes, they have been resolved. I will expand upon them more through email.

jgg 16y ago

What will this site do that Grooveshark or Last.fm doesn't, besides market to a different demographic?

k33n 16y ago

I find the term "cofounder" to be way overused, especially on HN lately. Once a company has been founded, and an initial product launched, how is it possible to "hire" a cofounder? Also: > The site needs someone young and hungry to work their ass off for equity. If you can't afford to pay a programmer, you should probably just work your own ass off.

kristiandupont 16y ago
>If you can't afford to pay a programmer, you should probably just work your own ass off. Are you suggesting that it is unethical for people to work for equity?
- k33n 16y ago
  Depends on the type of equity being offered, and who it's being offered to. The equity being offered here is probably worth nothing, or worse, is a liability. Especially since it's being offered to a "young and hungry" AKA "green" programmer who doesn't know that yet.
mhm6b 16y ago
I'm looking for someone that is going to drive the site forward without having to watch over them. I'm looking for someone to take ownership of their work. Thus, equity.
- enjo 16y ago
  One simple request: Can you please make sure you provide adequate counseling about the tax implications of 'working for equity' that given an already-launched product can be quite onerous?
  - damoncali 16y ago
    This is HUGE. The new hire can wind up with a substantial tax bill, and no cash to pay it with. Don't gloss over this!
    - grasshoper 16y ago
      Surely the government would accept equity in an ambitious young startup poised to reshape the world of online music.
      - 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

zackattack 16y ago

Who are you and what do you bring to the table?

mhm6b 16y ago
who are you and what do you bring to the table?
- fname 16y ago
  To be honest, Zack's question is spot on when looking for a co-founder; especially when all you're giving back in return is equity. Who are you? What have you done in the past? Can you show the community what you've done so far? I think the legal trouble you mention also needs some explanation (assuming you can talk about it in this open of a forum). A little effort can go a long way here.
- mahmud 16y ago
  You don't know Zack, but he runs a kickass online music service, bootstrapped by himself and he built everything.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- Locke1689 16y ago
  To be fair, at the very least Zack has links in his profile and >2000 karma on HN. Yours is a brand new account with no bio.

quantize 16y ago

As a university student, I can attest to the popularity of fratmusic.com - it is a resource used my many of my friends from across the country at different universities. It's recent shutdown caused quit a bit of chatter among all of us and we were sad to see it go. It would be great for it to come back with an even better and more substantial offering.

CharlesW 16y ago

FWIW, I'm not dyslexic and still had to read this a couple times before I saw something other than "FartMusic". Also, "frat" is not a positive word in most people's minds. Two good reasons for changing the name before you do anything else.

omarish 16y ago

I'd like to add a little bit to this discussion. Disclaimer: I wrote most of the site's code and worked extensively with Mark for the past few months. To start, Mark is a great co-founder. He doesn't code, but he always has a strong vision about the product. Yes, at first I thought that a visionary co-founder was a glorified way of saying over-zealous MBA, but Mark has the ability to see both the forest and the trees when it comes to building a product and developing software on a constrained schedule. The two of us worked extensively on the product, building and scaling it from a simple flatpage app to something that appealed to college kids around the US while handling 22 concurrent req/sec. I left FratMusic for two reasons. First, I didn't have enough time to dedicate to developing the site. Second, I was concerned with some of the legal issues that the site could be facing. Despite this, I know Mark has been working diligently to find a way to make the site work. If I had more time, I definitely would have stuck with the project. Technically, the site is pretty fun. I wrote it all in Django and it comes with some interesting problems, both tech and systems. From a technical perspective, I spent a fair bit of time trying to better recommend music to users, and to A/B test purchasing avenues through iTMS and Amazon. From a systems perspective, the site has a grown a lot. Last semester, we were doubling our slice's ram just about every three weeks. We switched from Apache to nginx and are now running in a full MySQL / python / fcgi / nginx / memcached environment. There are a lot of fun challenges in there to. FratMusic is a household name on a lot of college campuses. Here's a twitter search: http://twitter.com/search?q=fratmusic http://twitter.com/search?q=fratmusic. Our facebook page has about 25K fans and is growing. The site is very simple, but it works. Anyways, if you have any questions, feel free to ping me as well. omar.bohsali@gmail.com.